


Masks

by CamilleMoineau



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-24
Updated: 2009-08-24
Packaged: 2017-10-26 18:49:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CamilleMoineau/pseuds/CamilleMoineau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Disclaimer: Not mine.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Masks

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Not mine.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

A/N: The actors mentioned are from the Restoration period. On the English stage, Kynaston was the last of the "boy actors" (males impersonating females) and Hughes and Barry were two of the first actresses. I think POTC is set around the late 1710s, which is why I didn't mention anyone like Charlotte Charke.

The room where Giselle is lying awake in bed is, for the most part, quite still. Her candles (the ones she keeps only for when Jack returns to Tortuga) have long been blown out. In the window, the slightly tattered and rather dirty lace curtains flutter in the breeze - "Real Belgian lace," Jack had said when he gave them to her, before regaling her with a long story about how he came by them, one that involved a convoluted ruse involving disguising himself as a maid at the home of a baroness.

She looks over at him, his back turned to her so that she can see his scars (the obvious whip-marks he doesn't talk to her about) and smiles to herself, not only imagining how the cross-dressing situation played out, but also because she wonders if he knows how often she wears a disguises.

It was at the ripe age of fifteen, when she was in the lodgings of Mother Paxton, that she learned how to act. She learned how to apply with effortless ease the rouge to her cheeks, the blood-red scarlet to her lips, the kohl around her eyes - all to hide the pale cheeks, the occasional busted lips and black eye or two. Her trim figure has been kept over the years by a steady diet of pennyroyal tea - something she has forced herself to get accustomed. She has perfected how to coo and flatter one man, then cater to another's darkest desires by using all manner of physical and verbal force; she is to one an almost virginal sort who innocently smiles while handling his manhood, to another a succubus with a ravenous appetite that leaves the both of them exhausted and sore. She learned over the years how to pretend to enjoy the act - how and when to sigh, gasp, cry out, what to say or to keep silent; for everyone she is a regular actress, just as good as old Mrs. Barry or Mrs. Hughes had been.

Not completely, she admits. With Jack it's different. The same entrapments are there - the purrs, the bright laughter, the flattery - but with him it is real, no matter how much she tries to convince herself otherwise. She can't help but let the mask slip away when and where she encounters him - be it the Faithful Bride or some other tavern, or her own room here at Mother Paxton's. He pleases her just as much as she does him - the way he tells a story is mesmerizing - sometimes she wishes she weren't in need of cash, and he weren't so up for it, so he could talk longer - the way he handles her later upstairs as though he was really her paramour and not a paying visitor.

She considers if he treats his beloved _Pearl_ the same way. She decides he does. Actors, the both of them, playing for everyone else, save for the ones they truly love. This realization amuses her. She smiles.

"Kynaston and Hughes, we are," she mouths to the darkened room - she hears quiet laughter coming from her bedmate. She glances over at him - his eyes are still closed, his face still peacefulness defined. He must have done it in his sleep.

Or, at least, that's what she tells herself, as she drifts off to sleep.


End file.
